Jan 3, 2011

Via Memeorandum comes a link to this article in the New York Times reporting on an interview with outgoing Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson. The article recounts Grayson's standard critique of the GOP but emphasizes that in the conversation "he repeatedly aimed his artillery in an unexpected direction: toward his own party." Perhaps most surprisingly, however, the article states that the Department of Defense has a "relatively small annual budget." Excerpt:

He even gave his legislation provocative names, like the “The War Is Making You Poor Act,” which sought to reduce taxes by requiring the Defense Department to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan within its relatively small annual budget. (It did not pass.) [Emphasis added.]

The annual budget for the Department of Defense is now over $700 billion.